For the unsuspecting, it’s easy to underestimate fungi. Often microscopic or simply discrete, they do not always show up, but they are at the root of civilization and the very existence of the world as we know it.
In his debut book, “A Trama da Vida: How Fungi Build the World” (eds. Phosphorus and Ubu), which has just been released in Brazil, biologist Merlin Sheldrake literally dives into the question — in a “fermentation bath “, formed by decaying sawdust— and is leading other adventures to decipher and translate the role of these organisms, so important and at the same time so neglected.
The fermentation that gave rise to bread and beer, according to scholars, is closely associated with the first human settlements, when we gave up being hunter-gatherers, invested in agriculture and started to live a more predictable, secure and sedentary life.
Fungi were also responsible, hundreds of millions of years ago, for the transformation undergone by the ancestral upland. They decomposed the rock and allowed colonization by algae and, later, prepared the ground for the arrival of plants.
The connection of fungi with other organisms is intimate and intense. They are part of us, they are present in our skin, in our orifices and in the intestine, forming the microbiota.
Associated with the roots of more than 90% of modern plants, mycorrhizal fungi form a network structure that has been dubbed the “tree internet”. The name makes sense, as it is through these connections that different plants can share nutrients and information crucial for survival.
But the role of fungi is not restricted to support or messenger, they can also be voracious hunters. So say the nematode worms immobilized in adhesive nets, paralyzed with toxic substances, or even caught in traps that inflate to the touch—a kind of fungal land mine. And then it’s meal time.
One of the biggest problems in the kingdom of fungi is their preservation, explains Sheldrake, who will participate virtually at a table at Flip (International Literary Festival in Paraty) next Tuesday (30), at 6 pm, alongside Brazilian researcher Jorge Ferreira.
“It is essential that fungi are recognized, as well as animals and plants, as deserving of legal protections and conservation actions. Ultimately, we will achieve this by conserving entire ecosystems, and not directing efforts to protect some individual species”, he says Sheldrake, in an interview with sheet.
There would be many advantages of getting to know our distant relatives more deeply on the evolutionary scale (they also have a well-organized cell nucleus, which makes us closer to them than to bacteria, for example). The link with them goes far beyond the candidiasis, mycoses and pneumonia that eventually cause us.
Antibiotics such as penicillin are perhaps the most emblematic example of what we have to gain in the health dimension if we pay attention to fungi, but there are others, such as psilocybin, a drug now used experimentally to treat anxiety and depression disorders.
“Modern psychiatry is woefully poor in solutions to people’s problems. Most interventions seek to stifle symptoms, but not necessarily cure the cause of disorders. These psychedelic drugs hold promise in helping people in this quest,” he says. the biologist.
Not to mention the growing nutritional and culinary use of several species, whose production can be more very sustainable than animal protein, for example. It is not recommended, however, to go out and try the mushrooms you find in nature, as many are poisonous.
Among the other problems that fungi can help us tackle are pollution, including that caused by oil spills (since they feed on virtually anything), and obtaining materials capable of replacing plastic and being used in construction.
Despite advances, humanity still has a long way to go to achieve this fungal renaissance. “The only way to develop mycology [ramo da biologia que estuda os fungos] is bringing more young people eager to study it in a serious and qualified way,” says Sheldrake.
There is also a metaphysical nuance that emerges when we realize the central role of fungi in the ecosystem, not only being an inseparable part of plant life as we know it and of human diet and evolution, but also responsible for disposing of everything that dies — or there would be piles and piles of dead bodies and plants lying around.
They are responsible for digesting and recycling nutrients from all types of carcass and giving a breath of life to inanimate matter, by absorbing minerals from rocks and putting them to walk in the food web. In fact, fungi are the beginning and the end.
In the work, Sheldrake, more aware of this than ever, writes: “Now that this book is done, I can give it to the fungi to break it up. I’m going to moisten a copy and seed it with mycelium. Pleurotus. When he has eaten words, pages and ears, and oyster mushrooms have sprung from the cover, I will eat them.”
“From another copy I will remove the pages, crumple them and, with a weak acid, break the cellulose of the paper into sugars. To the sugar solution I will add a yeast. After brewing by fermentation, I will drink and close the cycle.” , complete.
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